This invention is related to an electrical socket with a socket body made of electrical contact material, which has slits therein forming at least one radially flexible contact finger, and a spring cage made of spring sheet metal enclosing the outside of the socket body, which biases the contact finger inwardly.
Conventional prior art electrical sockets have the frequently encountered disadvantage that the pressure exerted on the plug by the spring cage acting upon the contact finger, deviates over a wide pressure range from one plug-and-socket connection to another. This variation is attributable to the differences in the shaping of the parts while they are being manufactured. Therefore, the purpose of the present invention is to design a socket in which there is less variation in the spring tension operating on the inserted plug as communicated by the contact finger.
The solution to the problem lies in recognizing that the less the transconductance of the elasticity characteristic in the power/channel diagram, the less the spring tension operating on the contact plug will be dependent on the manufacturing tolerances of the parts. This is achieved, in the present invention, by forming a collar on the spring cage which surrounds the socket body at one end and has at least one biasing tongue, with a free end extending along the length of the spring cage between the collar and the opposite end of the spring cage. This biasing tongue is formed by slits in the spring cage. The tongue exerts pressure radially, inwards, on the contact finger of the socket body.